Interactive Wittgenstein: Essays in Memory of Georg Henrik von Wright

215 Pages·2011·1.498 MB·English

by  Juliet Floyd (auth.), Enzo De Pellegrin (eds.)

Interactive Wittgenstein
SYNTHESE LIBRARY
STUDIESINEPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC,METHODOLOGY,ANDPHILOSOPHYOF SCIENCE
Editors-in-Chief:
VINCENT F. HENDRICKS, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
JOHN SYMONS, University of Texas at El Paso, U.S.A.
Honorary Editor:
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University, U.S.A.
Editors:
DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
TEDDY SEIDENFELD, Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.
PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.
JAN WOLEN´ SKI, Jagiellonian University, Krako´w, Poland
VOLUME 349
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Interactive Wittgenstein
Essays in Memory of Georg Henrik
von Wright
Editedby
Enzo De Pellegrin
123
Dr.EnzoDePellegrin
[email protected]
ISBN978-1-4020-9908-3 e-ISBN978-1-4020-9909-0
DOI10.1007/978-1-4020-9909-0
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Preface
WhenGeorgHenrikvonWrightdiedinhisnativetownofHelsinkion16June
2003,aged87,heleftbehindarichandvariedlegacyofscholarlyachievements.
Apartfromtherenownhehadattainedforhisworkinphilosophicallogicand
asaquintessentialContinentalthinkeronculturaltopics,thepolyglotFinnof
Scottish descent had earned the esteem of philosophers and scholars around
the globe for his wide-ranging efforts to make the philosophical thought of
LudwigWittgensteinavailabletoaninterestedpublic.AsafriendofWittgen-
stein’s, his successor as Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University and
one of the original legatees of his literary estate, von Wright played a crucial
partincompilingandorganizingthevastbodyofWittgenstein’smanuscripts
andtypescripts.This,initself,wasnominorfeat,forwhatisknownsimplyas
“theNachlass”amongexpertsturnedouttobeageographicallyscatteredset
of interrelated texts. In an effort to tame this abundance, von Wright devised
a simple classificatory framework and created an annotated catalogue, both
ofwhichremaininusebyspecialiststoday,servingasindispensableguidesto
the corpus of Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings.
VonWrightwasalsodeeplyinvolvedinextractingfromtheNachlass many
of the books through which Wittgenstein’s philosophy has reached a broader
philosophical audience. Among the volumes he edited and co-edited are Re-
marks on the Foundations of Mathematics,Notebooks 1914–1916,Culture and
Value, Zettel, On Certainty, Notes on Logic, and four volumes of remarks on
the philosophy of psychology.
But von Wright not only helped open up a wide new field of inquiry,
now known as Wittgenstein Studies, and define its borders through his edito-
rial work. He also helped us place Wittgenstein’s work in the context of the
philosopher’s life by producing an early memoir and by publishing, in collab-
oration with Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein’s correspondence with, among
others, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore and Frank Plumpton Ramsey. More-
over,thecarefullyresearchedaccountsheprovidedofthetangledtextualhis-
tory of Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
V
VI Preface
and the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations are considered
classics in the field to this day.
Early on, von Wright took strides to make the material basis of his schol-
arlyandeditorialworkaccessibletootherspecialists.Heopenedhiscollection
ofcopiesfromtheNachlass toacountlessnumberofvisitorsatthephilosophy
department at the University of Helsinki. Working alongside Norman Mal-
colm, von Wright supervised the production of a set of microfilms, which, in
duplicated form, would remain the primary resource for scholarly research on
Wittgenstein’sphilosophyforseveraldecadesuntiltheWittgensteinArchives
at the University of Bergen and Oxford University Press released the results
of many years of steadfast efforts to present text and images of the Nachlass
in machine-readable form on CD-ROM. This venture, too, received crucial
support from von Wright.
TohonorthememoryofGeorgHenrikvonWrightandhismanifoldcontri-
bution to the study of Wittgenstein’s lifework, the present volume assembles
essays by experts in the field. Its main title derives from the unique focus
many of these essays provide on the philosophical significance of Wittgen-
stein’s real and presumed interactions with—and of his reactions to—other
thinkers, including his former self, for the development of his thought.
The first three contributions concern nature and scope of Wittgenstein’s
philosophicalandpersonalinteractionswiththeGermanphilosopherandlogi-
cianGottlobFrege,asrelatedchieflythroughlettersandcardsthatFregehad
addressedtotheyoungphilosopherbetweentheyearsof1914and1920.Itwas
duringthisperiodthatWittgensteinservedonthesideoftheCentralPowers
during World War I and composed his seminal Tractatus. Frege’s dispatches
tothefrontlineandhisletterstotheunpublishedauthorafterhisreturnfrom
war and captivity are rendered here in the original German with a modern
English translation en face, which was jointly undertaken by the late Burton
Dreben and by Juliet Floyd. The one-sided correspondence reflects Frege’s
admiration for the unflinching soldier’s ability to keep up scientific work un-
der conditions of hardship. But it also contains stridently worded criticism of
a typescript version of the Tractatus, which Frege had received in 1919. In
addition, as Floyd, who also provides a prefatory note and an indispensable
scholarly apparatus, points out in a companion essay entitled “Interpretive
Themes”, Frege’s letters record his response to criticism Wittgenstein had
lodged about Frege’s paper “Thoughts” in the half of their correspondence
that is now missing. Drawing on her own research on the correspondence
between Frege and Wittgenstein, Floyd puts the mutual criticisms into per-
spectives and speculates on the extent to which these criticisms may have
played a part in the abrupt termination of their interaction.
The theme of influence, or lack thereof, is the starting point for Eran
Guter’sexplorationofWittgenstein’sthoughtonmusicandmusicallanguage.
In his essay “A Surrogate for the Soul: Wittgenstein and Schoenberg”, Guter
challenges a widespread assumption, arguing that Wittgenstein and the Aus-
trian composer Arnold Schoenberg had little in common beyond their shared
Preface VII
culturalheritage,overlappingsocialcirclesinfin-de-si`ecleViennaandtheno-
toriety each of them had attained in his respective domain in the first half
of the twentieth century. Guter combines a vivid account of Wittgenstein’s
aesthetic inclinations and the intellectual influences that may have reinforced
them with a survey of various philosophical statements by Wittgenstein on
music,musicalmeaningandlanguage.GuteralsoattemptstoformaWittgen-
steinian response to Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic language and to answer the
question as to why Wittgenstein and Schoenberg arrived at very different
ideas about contemporary music and the music of the future.
Inhisessay“TheCrashofthePhilosophyoftheTractatus:TheTestimony
ofWittgenstein’sNotebooksinOctober1929”,JaakkoHintikkadescribesthe
central features of what he takes to be Wittgenstein’s own reassessment of
Tractarian doctrines in the years of 1929 and 1930. Building on conclusions
in his earlier interpretive work on Wittgenstein, Hintikka focuses on a small
number of entries to Wittgenstein’s philosophical diaries and other sources
that he takes to reflect a momentous shift in Wittgenstein’s conception of
language. It is this shift, Hintikka argues, that brings about an abrupt and
lasting change in Wittgenstein’s thinking and radically transforms his stance
on a wide range of philosophical questions. Besides providing a translation
of the relevant passages from the Nachlass, Hintikka examines some of the
methodological issues arising from the shift of 1929.
The shift in thought that David Pears has in mind in his contribution
to this volume, which is entitled “Linguistic Regularity” and a different ver-
sion of which appears in his book “Paradox and Platitude in Wittgenstein’s
Philosophy” (Oxford University Press, 2006), is of another sort altogether. It
pertains to basic differences Pears perceives in the ways Wittgenstein treats
philosophical questions about linguistic meaning, and in particular linguistic
regularity, in the Tractatus and in his later writings, such as the Philosophi-
cal Investigations. Pears assumes that, in his later work, Wittgenstein comes
to reject his Tractarian account of the phenomenon of linguistic regularity.
Starting with this assumption, Pears sets out to examine the question as to
what replaces Wittgenstein’s earlier account of the phenomenon in his later
considerations on philosophical uses of the notion of meaning.
Finally,withhisessay“OnaRemarkbyJukundus”,JoachimSchulteturns
our attention to Wittgenstein’s views on religious belief and practice. While
doubtful that Wittgenstein produced a self-standing philosophy of religion,
Schulte takes the scattered remarks on religion in the Nachlass, and in par-
ticular those on Christianity, to reflect Wittgenstein’s distinctive conception
of ethics. The centerpiece in Schulte’s survey is his analysis of Wittgenstein’s
qualifiedrejectionofthePaulinedoctrineofelectionbygraceasmeaningless.
SchulteproposesanewreadingofWittgenstein’sclaimthatthisdoctrinecan
be accepted as meaningful on one level of religiosity while being rejected as
meaningless on another level. Along the way, Schulte develops an account of
Wittgenstein’s personal level of religiosity that connects his laconic remarks
on this matter with other strands in his thinking.
Georg Henrik von Wright
(1916–2003). Reproduced
by Courtesy of Anna-
Maija Hintikka.
Acknowledgments
Fortheirsageadviceandgenerousassistance,particularlyduringearlystages
intheevolutionofthisvolume,IthankJaakkoHintikkaandRobertS.Cohen.
Moreover,IoweadebtofgratitudetoHermiKastnerandReginaldE.Harris
fortheunflaggingsupportandencouragementtheybothprovidedthroughout
thepastfewyears.Ananonymousrefereewhosescrupulouseyedetectedmany
aninfelicityinanearlierversionofthemanuscriptsubmittedtothepublisher
deserves special thanks. I also gratefully acknowledge the unstinting support
of Ingrid van Laarhoven of Springer Publishing Company. Sadly, David Pears
passed away before this volume reached the printer. His original contribution
is included here by kind permission of his widow, Anne Pears.
IX